Annabel Rockett

My DPhil thesis, supervised by Professor Armand D’Angour, considers the reception and transmission of Plato’s musical ideas in Late Antiquity. Beginning with the Republic, which constitutes Plato’s first attempt to exploit the ethical powers of music within his ideal city, my research uses music as a tool to deconstruct various Latin texts. As I examine sound, rhythm, and musical motifs, I seek to demonstrate how Plato’s philosophy of music sounds out from within the centuries of poetry and prose which followed him.